Messages

Hey Technocrat - just thought I'd offer a little input on your animation - your kinetics on her breasts are a little off. They are more liquid, and behave more like a water balloon than a balloon filled with air. At the moment the way you have her, her breasts sort of float. What you want is more of a dramatic transition as gravity continues to pull down when she begins her upstep. I've edited basically only the breasts in this, but hope that it helps (I've gotten way too much practice animating boobies while working on KI).


Hopefully this helps.

Thank you everyone for your enlightening, if generally expected responses. I realize that each individual is going to have varied opinions about this issue, but it's interesting to see not only the thoughts of the vocal minority and various news sites, but also the thoughts of people who consider themselves aspiring developers, independent developers and/or gamers with a vested interest in the development process.

The best thing about there being a lot of hot conversation about a single topic is that you get to see a lot of people sounding off about it. Today, I came across a thread on Reddit which is somewhat more concise than my above description, and I thought that I would post it here for anyone interested in getting the developer's perspective.

No, this is not going to be an AMA. I've decided to briefly come out of my perpetual lurking state because lately there has been some outrage in /gaming/ regarding DLC, DRM, and numerous other decisions gaming companies have made.

And no, I'm not going to reveal who I am, because I'm not going to be a popular person by the time this thread is done with.

I'm going to get this out of the way right now.

DRM exists because people pirate games. I'm sorry if that answer upsets you or in turn causes you to pirate more games, but that's the way it is. As developers, we would rather DRM didn't exist because it's an extra hurdle to get through before a game can be released. I've spoken to others in the industry, and it's a foregone conclusion that we are moving towards a cloud based system where very little of the game will reside on your hard drive. Retail stores used to fight this idea, but with how PC game sales are trending towards digital distribution, it's really not a question of if but when.

The only reason why you see certain members of the industry speak out in favor of piracy, is they are trying to gain popularity and encourage you to buy their game. It's the same reason why musicians do it, and the same reason why certain actors/actresses defend their work being downloaded illegally.

Now that I have most of you frothing at the mouth.. onto DLC.

You are correct in assuming that most DLC is created before the game is finished. More often than not, we are approached 50-60 percent into the development cycle of a game and asked how we want to handle content post production. This has become more and more common the last five-six years, and it is a direct result of several evolving changes in the industry.

To be blunt, you can blame Gamestop and other retail stores that encourage buying used games more than new ones. Someone is less likely to sell back their title if they know more content is on the way, and with the fact that some games now can be finished in a day playing time, we have to move fast with DLC announcements.

Yes, you are caught in a bit of a war between distributors and publishers. I'm sorry.

Pre-Order bonuses have been ramping up in popularity because they work rather well.

Which sorts of leads me to my final diatribe.

DLC promises and Pre Order bonuses increase sales. Again, I'm sorry if those facts upset you, but we aren't an industry of upholding some false ethical code. Over the last several years, the consumer has eaten up both of these business practices and shown us that we can and will benefit from using them.

Do I think what EA is doing is bullshit? Yes, I do. Are they getting away with it? Yes, they are. I admire what Reddit is doing with the boycott, but please keep in mind that /gaming/ does not represent the majority of gamers. There are people who, upon hearing of the Pre-Order bonus, immediately signed up for it.

My advice to /gaming/ before I leave

    Digitally Download your games. The sooner retail stores are mostly out of the equation, the sooner some of these aspects of the industry might dissipate.

    Stop pirating. Seriously though, stop. If you don't think that there is a correlation between DRM and piracy numbers, then you are not doing it right. If you are going to pirate, then please buy the games you do download.

    The best advice I can give. Follow through with your boycott. Follow through with every boycott. Companies can ignore verbal insults, but they cannot ignore explaining to the shareholders why profits are down. If a boycott works, then it is quite effective. Key word is IF.

A.D. out -

Read the whole thread here.

This wasn't me, but I agree with each and every one of his statements. Honestly, to my ears, everything he's saying makes perfect sense and I'm glad more people on this side of the argument are sounding off. As I mentioned before, I understand that gamers don't generally actually care about the people making the games or the reasons they make them as they do. This is just a part of life, but I hope that people are at least willing to take an interest in the argument. Communication is key in any relationship, right?

[Archer]

These are relatively mainstream, so I would imagine that you're already familiar with them, but I thought I'd mention them anyway for anyone who isn't already familiar:

Archer
The story of ISIS, a top-secret privatized spy organization and its top agent, Sterling Archer - an oafish, womanizing, alcoholic, misogynistic James Bond analogue who is just perfect. Voiced by an all-star cast, including a number of the cast of cult classic TV show "Arrested Development".

The Venture Bros.
A parody of basically all of the 'for-kids' action comics and cartoons of the 60's - particularly Jonny Quest and the Hardy Boys. Revolves around the eponymous Venture brothers, Hank and Dean, as well as their father, washed-up super scientist Thaddeus Venture and their "Half-Swedish Killing Machine" bodyguard, Brock Samson, as well as one of the best Rogues' Galleries in contemporary television, predominantly "The Monarch" and his partner in crime/girlfriend "Dr. Girlfriend".

For Japanese cartoons, I recommend:

Death Note
The story of a bored supra-genius university student who comes into possession of a grim reaper's notebook - a magical item that instantly kills anyone whose name is written into it. Blurs the boundaries between good and evil as you follow the antagonist in his crusade to create a perfect world, free of crime but ruled by fear of divine retribution.

Berserk (Site in Japanese)
An epic medieval fantasy tale of a young warrior named Guts, who joins a band of mercenaries called the "Band of the Hawk", led by charismatic, megalomaniacal would-be knight king Griffith on a quest of honor, betrayal, love and loss. Not for the faint of heart. The cartoon series is a little old, but is being remade as an animated film soon. The comic is still in publication, with as of this writing 35 books averaging roughly 250+ pages each.

Thanks for the responses, guys! I'm really enjoying it, and am really glad that I could get some decent opinions out of my favorite gaming community.

Mostly when it makes you feel like you've bought an incomplete package.

Would you say that because additional content is in development/planned for a game at the time of release, it is an incomplete package? At what point is a game "complete"? One infamous example would be the "lost levels" in Assassin's Creed II - the Forli missions that were all but completely removed from the original game, but made available as the "Bonfire of the Vanities" package. I played from the beginning to the end of ACII without playing those particular missions (Though did explore the city looking for Assassin Tombs) and don't think the game suffered for their lack of inclusion. Of course, I assume I'm much more permissive of this, since I'm usually the one cutting content to get a project done in time/under budget.

I'm surprised you assume the client should care about any of the publisher's challenges with distribution and sales. The publishers don't lower their prices just to be nice if it means getting less profits, do they?

In no way do I assume consumers do or even should care about the publisher's end. I put all of that information up there entirely as an example of the publisher's justification and nothing else. Hell, I've worked customer support - I fully understand that the average gamer wants to play the game and could give a rat's ass about the people who made it, for the most part - this is one of the many reasons people pirate software. It's one of the reasons I used to pirate software but don't anymore. And of course publishers don't lower prices to be nice, they lower prices to increase profit and hedge risk, because without the profits made from the game, a game company will go bankrupt. Again - users rarely care about that sort of thing, though.

One of the saddest things I've heard in the industry was when people were actually saying "Good riddance" when the entirety of Pandemic got closed down by EA.

Congratulations on finishing, Akril! I really enjoyed "The Inside Job" when I played it a few years ago, and it's great to see a proper sequel and proper respects paid to all those games that just never happened. I'll be playing through it and I'll comment on the game as soon as I'm done.

Hey MonkE3y - nice to see someone managed to scale the great wall of text, and an interesting evaluation of pricing. I remember that thread, though I didn't participate in it. To be honest, I thought that IcE3yGamE3StudioE3 had some intriguing ideas about monetizing adventure games. It's a pity so few people take him seriously just because of his obsession with Square Enix. I think it would be really interesting to have an open discussion about the possibilities of DLC for adventure games (Can it be done, aside from in the Episodic format?).

To be honest, I try to use the "percent of gameplay" numbering when considering DLC pricing as well, though that can be particularly tough to work out when you're calculating for content that's more 'enhancement' than 'extension'. So a question for you, then: Say that I've released an action-adventure with a playtime of around 20 hours - 30 hours if you're a quest completionist, 100 or so if you're a collector type. What content would you be willing to pay $1 for? And what about $5, or $10?

[Game Theory Discussion: Downloadable Content]

Game Theory Discussion: Downloadable Content

First, a disclaimer. This appears to be a bit of a sore spot for many consumers and I do not wish to start a flame war. I swear I am not trolling - This is a huge point of discussion and one that is extremely important in my line of work. I was recently reminded about the hatred of DLC by the outcry regarding EA's Battlefield 3 and I would like to open a discussion within a section of the gaming community that I trust to give me informed and intelligent responses about important issues that face the gaming community as a whole. I recognize that this is not entirely relevant to this community, but I believe that as game creators, it is something worth thinking about.

A little background: 2 Years ago, I re-entered the world of professional game creation as an assistant producer in a publishing studio (The evil overlords of commercial gaming). I have recently also been promoted to a proper producer's position and am therefore very deeply involved with the DLC planning/implementation process. I have had the very educational experience of releasing a number of very distinct projects that have run the gamut of varying levels of successful and unsuccessful since I began. My company is also one of the first studios in Japan to really have embraced Downloadable Content (DLC), and we had the honor of being recognized by Sony Computer Entertainment at the end of 2010 for our contribution to downloadable gaming.

We released one game in late 2009 called ウィザードリィ 囚われし魂の迷宮 (Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls) - a PS3 title that is a reboot of the classic 1980s Sir-Tech "Wizardry" property, whose license we obtained the rights for a ways back. It was released as a Download-only title on PlayStation Network and for all intents and purposes, even with a relatively small install base (compared to huge game companies), it was still something that I consider successful. One of the reasons for the project's success was with its large amount of available DLC. We managed to achieve a DLC attach rate (The rate of users that purchase the original product and also pay for DLC) of close to 50%, and though this is a rare case, I will be using this project as a reference in this discussion, as it contains examples of all forms of DLC.

As we are a game development community, I assume that most if not all of you are familiar with the concept of DLC, but for posterity's sake, I would like to take a moment to define DLC and its subsets.

What is DLC?
DLC stands for DownLoadable Content. It refers to any content related to a single product that can be obtained separately via a monetized (Paid DLC) or non-monetized (Free DLC) transaction. Paid DLC is a hot topic in gamer circles for popularizing the concepts of microtransactions, in which the end-user purchases a product, and pays separately for small, frequently insignificant items (avatar items, equipment), though it can refer to the purchase of Expansion Packs as well.

How does DLC work?
Traditionally, computer and console games were not designed to handle additional content; but as of more recently, developers have created a method by which certain parts of code or script can be altered through "patching". Patching has existed for many, many years in the PC gaming space, but is still a fairly young concept for console gaming. These patches can be downloaded and applied individually to a product, adding content that can be accessed in-game through a method as specified by the developer. This content can be accessed in two distinct ways: Via Content Licenses and Downloadable Packages. I will touch on these subjects below.

What is the difference between Standard DLC and an Expansion Pack?

The simple answer to this is that there is none - both are content added to further the experience of the game, provided separate to the main "Vanilla" experience but dependent upon it to function. On a more deep level, when we get into nuance, they become very largely different entities of their own. The general consensus seems to be that "Standard DLC" ranges from cosmetic upgrades (Costume packs/Avatar items) through to "Map Packs" (Additional levels of gameplay not previously available in the main product). In contrast to this, you have Expansions, which are similar to map-packs, but also serve to extend the game's narrative, and often contain a variety of other additional content (Items, cosmetic upgrades, etc.). To put more succinctly, Expansions are Bigger and more all-inclusive versions of DLC (Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls offers a large variety of small, monetized items, as well as a full Expansion Pack and smaller Content License Expansion. I am contractually unable to give specific numbers, but at its peak, the most downloaded DLC was the full, downloadable Expansion Pack, though there are content licenses that do very well financially).

A fairly large amount of research and monitoring of varied gaming-discussion forums/sites leads me to believe that the general consensus is that Expansion Packs are more widely accepted by the common user-base as "Good" DLC, which leads me to Theory 1*:

Theory 1: Larger and more inclusive DLC is better than small individual DLC, even though larger DLC is traditionally more expensive.

To elaborate: As opposed to paying for an enhanced existing experience, players would rather spend a large amount of money for a completely new additional game experience, within the confines of the original game's engine and narrative (In some cases, the cohesion of narrative is tenuous, with expansions like Red Dead Redemption's Undead Nightmare expansion**).

What is the difference between Content Licenses and Downloadable Packages?

A Content License refers to a DLC item that unlocks existing content by downloading an identifying key. The game recognizes this key and allows the player to access this content. This is often referred to as "On-Disk*** DLC" or "Unlocks". As the content in question exists as data that is installed as part of the game, but can not be accessed without the aid of the unlock (Generally monetized), it is one of the largest targets for end-user ire. This is also closely tied with the concept of "Planned DLC". See Below for more information.

A Downloadable Package refers to DLC that is not released as part of the original package, but contains data that must be downloaded and added to the game in order for content to be accessed. As the data for a Downloadable Package can be created separately from the original product, this allows for long-term support for a game, expanding the scope of a project beyond the finished product at release.

How can a publisher justify charging for DLC?

"If I buy a game at full price, why should I have to pay for a part of the game? Also, how do you justify releasing a game "unfinished", then forcing us to pay extra to get the whole game?"

The above quote is a paraphrase of one of the most common arguments against DLC that I hear when discussing the theory and practice thereof. I put specific emphasis on the word "unfinished", as it is one of the major complaints related to DLC - the assumption that once extra content is released for the game, the game ceases to be complete until the additional content is applied to the game. This is directly related, in my opinion, to a common completionist attitude in popular gaming culture and boils down in many players' minds as a matter of perception which is very much at odds to the mindset of a game publisher.

To put it very simply, the publisher does not withhold critical content. The game will be able to be played from beginning to end without any significant hindrance regardless of whether DLC has been purchased or not. This does not mean that a number of publishers do not design their games with incentives to have the player buy extra content, whether it be via expanding the game world through an expansion, or allowing the player to "buy time with money", and lower the difficulty level by buying powerful items and removing the effort traditionally required to acquire them.

If a game requires DLC to be purchased in order to progress to the end, that falls into the realm of Patches  (or Updates), Paid Demos or Episodic Content. I will touch upon Episodic content further down in this document. To very briefly touch upon patches/updates, if a game contains a "Game breaking bug" that can not be circumvented and prevents the player from progressing to the end, that must be fixed via a patch. Patches are never (to my knowledge) monetized. If anyone wishes to hear my justification of "Day one patches", I will be glad to write about them, but this is already very long, so I will save it for later.

The purpose of DLC from the perspective of a publisher is that it is content that enhances and enriches an already-finished product. The player is given the option to add extra content beyond the structure of the game itself that changes the nature of the game or adds to the overall experience, but is not critical to the game. Episodic Content is generally considered to be an entirely separate entity, and though relevant to this discussion, deserves its own section.

If Content Licenses are already on the disk, why should we pay to access data we already purchased?

Content Licenses are one of the trickier areas of DLC and harder as a publisher to justify without seeming like money-grubbing suits. Ultimately, it is justified with the same argument above - as it is non-critical content that does not restrict the narrative in any way, it should be considered as such. The benefit of releasing extra content on the game disk*** is that it is more easily accessable to the end-user, as it only requires a key of a few kilobytes worth of data to unlock.

Content Licenses also have other applications, such as what I like to refer to as "Paid cheats" (or "Buying Time with Money", as outlined above) - allowing the user to pay for an item instead of finding it in-game, or pay for an item that will increase the power of their character(s). This is very often applied in "Freemium" or "Free-To-Play" model games, MMOs being one of the most common examplese. In Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls, we released a relatively large library of equipment that could be purchased in this manner, as well as items that raise the randomly generated bonus point value available to a character during character creation. In this instance the player is considered to be "Buying time". By spending money (At their own discretion), the player is spared needing to "grind" to find rare equipment (In the case of Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls, it is a single player game, so does not give paid users an unfair advantage against others, though this is a common occurrance).

What is Planned DLC and why do people hate it?

Planned DLC refers to expanded content that is in development prior to the release of the original product, most commonly the target of disdain when announced also prior to the title's release, once again leading to frequent "unfinished" claims, such as "If they are already making it, that just means that it's part of the game they're not putting in so that they can force us to play later!"

In order to explain and/or justify the existance of Planned DLC, it requires a little information about product releases. Without going into too much detail (Unless specifically asked), the mastering phase for a full product is separate from that of the downloadable content for said product. This is particularly relevant in the case of console software, as with the PC, it is often up to the discretion of the publisher who are not at the mercy of a licensor (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo). Console software in particular should be in masterable form (Publisher QA finished) at least 2 months prior to release. Ideally somewhat earlier. However, once you enter into the QA phase of a piece of software, generally a large amount of the design staff are freed up for other projects. In order to keep them employed, as well as release finished DLC long before the game's product lifecycle has ended, this means that almost invariably DLC is being developed as soon as a project is finished, if not months before in the case of larger games.

To use a well-recieved example, Dragon Age: Awakening (DLC Expansion to Dragon Age: Origins) was in development for almost a year before its release.

What is Episodic Content and why is it more well accepted?

Episodic content refers to an almost subgenre of game in which the game itself is (generally) a budget title that requires less time to complete than other games in its sector, that provides a singular chunk of a larger narrative including a beginning, middle and end (to the individual episode). It takes popular Television nomenclature, "Episode", and applies it to a game design philosophy. In Episodic Games, you can "Enjoy one episode from the beginning to the end and receive closure, but understand that it is a part of a series with a definitive 'Macro' beginning and end". Episodic games are frequently released as "Seasons", particularly well done by Telltale Games (Which, as adventure gamers, I'm sure we're all familiar with).

Episodic content is, for all intents and purposes, no different from larger, sequelized game franchises except for the fact that it is understood by both parties involved (Publisher and consumer) that there will be multiple sequels in short succession, generally without or with minimal updates to the game engine. It was resisted at first by many consumers, but seems to have been largely accepted at this point - a phenomenon I am still mulling over. This leads me to Theory 2:

Theory 2: If content is provided as separate, autonomous entities, users will for the most part cease to consider them purely as DLC.

Finally, I would like to briefly address another facet of DLC that is being addressed by gamers in relation to the previously mentioned Battlefield 3: Exclusive Pre-order/Store DLC.

It is not uncommon for a Publisher to enter into an agreement with a store, or the general user-base by proxy, wherein purchase of the software under certain conditions is incentivized by the inclusion of downloadable content exclusive to those purchasers (i.e. Receiving a specific special bonus level or item when you buy a game from GameStop, as opposed to a separate special item when purchased from Electronics Boutique - which may no longer exist, apologies as I haven't been game shopping in the states in years). This is done with the user base in the form of what is referred to as "Preorder Bonuses" - Special content that is offered exclusively to people who promise to purchase the game prior to its sale (Often putting up a percentage of the cost of the software ahead of time).

The reasoning for preorder bonuses, as you may suspect, is to encourage users to pre-order their software, which in turn gives stores and distributors incentive to buy more copies which they can retail to the general public. I'd like to just put forward the reason behind this practice, and allow you to judge its validity on your own.

Why does a Publisher need to sell copies of a game before it even goes on shelves?

There are many reasons, most of which are between the individual companies involved in the creation, distribution and selling of games. Many years ago (Disturbingly, before many of the members of this very forum were old enough to be playing/buying games), games were a booming industry in which development costs were reasonable, and the returns were large because a very large number of users would purchase games frequently. As of the recent market crashes, users are becoming more frugal (Which they rightfully should), and by that same right, stores are doing the same.

I can only speak from experience for the Japanese method in this section, and I know that it is different in North America and Europe, but here, every copy in the store is a copy of the game that the store has paid for prior to selling it to the consumer. This is why they call it retail. Even though they are traditionally the only channel by which people can purchase their games, the stores still need to buy a specific number of copies to put on their shelves. Stores have analysts****, or "buyers" who research user interest and make a quantitative decision as to how many copies of an individual game they think that they can sell.

These sale forecasts are heavily influenced by factors like preorders, especially in the case of new IPs - Stores relay their purchase numbers to the distributor (usually an external company, as only the largest publishers have distribution channels of their own), which in turn offer to purchase a number of copies from the publisher (Who pays for the games to be created on disc usually by the licensor - i.e. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo). Everybody in this line takes a risk by spending their money, and if they pay for too many copies and they can't sell them, it creates a surplus, drives the cost of the game down after sale date and nobody wins. The opposite happens when a game is under-quoted, which leads to an unmet demand (Exactly what happened with our most recent game, AKIBA'S TRIP).

As most games make 80% or more of their total profits within the first week of sale, if there are too many or aren't enough copies in circulation, there is either a loss of funds by the stores, which in some countries will sell back the extra copies to the publisher, who in turn has to essentially throw them away or convince other buyers to take the extra copies, or there is a loss of potential profit due to waning interest/loss of potential day-one sales.

Now, I move on to the questions I would like to have answered:

• What kind of DLC are you willing to pay for? Why?
  
• Do you believe that DLC is a good/bad thing? Why?
  
• Do you agree/disagree with any of the above statements? Why?
  
• Do you think that the inclusion of exclusive DLC warrants Boycotting? Why?
  

* Please note that these sweeping, blanket assumptions will almost certainly be wrong when picked apart on a deeper level.

** These products were also released as packaged retail products, which in a manner of speaking takes it out of the realm of pure DLC, as it is not Downloadable, but extended content. However, for the purposes of this topic, it will still be referred to as DLC.

*** On-Disk DLC can be something of a misnomer - it should be clarified that data does not need to be contained within physical media to be "On the game disk". On-Disk DLC can exist within downloadable packaged games.

**** The "Store" referenced here is generally not the individual store that the consumer shops at, but the greater corporate entity that owns and operates every store under its wing.

TL:DR

DLC

Y U NO LIKE?

slacker dudebro

Hah, I got a kick out of that one. Yeah, the game's basically about a group of slacker Space Pirates (Where my name came from, actually. Finally getting around to gamifying it). Wasn't originally going to have the monolith in there - I'm attempting to throw in a handful of less obvious sci-fi references - but I might put it in now, just as a shout out to this thread.

And I need more Barn Runner. Make it happen!

S3 - the demo looks groovy. I'm slacking off at work right now, but I'll save actually downloading and playing for tonight after I get home.

LimpingFish - Looks like I'm going to have to play that as well. As soon as Duals got scared shitless, I realized it needs to be played. And here I was, thinking I was going to get some work done on my own projects tonight.

Tabata - Groovy design; reminds me of DOOM. You should do something with it - it's a shame to let a good sprite go to waste.

Nice catch, Dual, it is indeed. Figured most people would figure it out pretty quickly. Even copied the terrible retro stewardess uniforms.

Some of you may have already seen some of this stuff in a recent thread of mine in the Critics' Lounge, but hey, I'm an attention whore.






Very rough WIP. May have to redo the whole room.

Also, my name looks ridiculous now.

Blood was sweet. And to be honest, I hardly played the original Duke Nukem 3D (Played the 2D platformers a bit way back when) - I skipped a lot of the peripherary FPSes, like Hexen and Redneck Rampage and basically just stuck to id FPSes - Doom, Doom II, Quake, up until around the time when they dropped single player altogether.

Got a huge kick out of Outlaws though. Now that was a great FPS. Sure, it's essentially the swan song of Lucasarts' original IPs before they decided that all they ever need are Star Wars games, but I don't let what it heralded get in the way of what it was.

It would be great if I could have gotten my First Access Club code so I could actually try the demo. Unfortunately, 2K are restricting demo access to some countries (Japan, in my case) so I either have to wait until sometime next month to actually get my code, or buy the game imported on good faith and realize that the First Access Club was basically completely pointless.

Region restrictions really annoy me to no end. I've dealt with publisher licensing agreements before - if there was any announced partnership with a Japanese publisher to get DNF here in Japan, I'd be a little more understanding; but since 2K has their own publishing arm here in Japan, there's absolutely no reason that they shouldn't be able to release it to us. Sad thing is, I'm hearing mostly negative feedback on the game, but I want to give it the benefit of the doubt. I loved Borderlands, but Gearbox/2K are kinda rubbing me the wrong way with this one. I thought they were better than EA on this kind of effed up international policy.

Congratulations, Mad! Great job - awesome chef, too. I was away from the forums during most of this whole OSD emergence thing, so need to really catch up on the series.

Now, start another topic so I have something else to waste time on between writing pages of documentation!

[NSFW]

Writing out any accent phonetically can come across as offensive to the particularly sensitive, but if you want it, then you should go for it. Honestly, every French person I've met who speaks English has a very different accent, so it'd be very tough to get it across without voice acting. In order to do the immediately recognizable French accent, use the 'z' for 'th' sounds, replace difficult English words with their French counterparts and so on. Nobody I've ever seen actually talks like that, but caricature is one of those literary things we just have to employ sometimes.

Note, the following webcomic is NSFW, so keep that in mind before reading it, but there is a French immigrant character named Didi in the comic Menage a 3 that does the whole French caricature quite well and only goes marginally over the top.

Just for anyone that hasn't tried it, I was having some similar issues with FF4, and realized that it seems to be an issue with text resizing - most specifically with scaling down text. I will often ctrl+mousewheel to change a site to a size that I prefer (I like smaller text so I can see more at a time), but Firefox 4 seems to have issues with scaling the text - I assumed it might have something to do with my editing of the Cairo image scaling options, so that I could see pixel art without resampling.

You might want to just test out ctrl+mousewheel to see if your text reappears. The page might be larger or smaller on your browser window than you are used to, but until Mozilla's Firefox development team resolves this issue, it's probably the best way to take care of it.

And in response to Erenoth - if you're getting viruses, it's your browsing habits, not your browser of choice. Firefox has had some security holes in the past not unlike Explorer, Safari, Chrome and any other browser out there, but it's as solid as any other in my experience. I would suggest installing a better antivirus/anti-spam/firewall program and avoiding shady sites. Especially in the case of those of us involved in the indie game scene, there are a lot of shady programs out there, even malicious bits of code in indie games that the developer never even foresaw, or that get tacked on between their upload and your download. Scan every new program for viruses once it's on your local drive before you open it.

[essential]

Like the other two gentlemen who replied to the thread, I have lived a few years of poverty in my lifetime as well, so I thought that I would share - maybe even put your mind at ease a little.

The first thing you want to do, as mentioned above, is to cut out unnecessary expenses, and this takes a little self-evaluation as well. I was homeless for about 10 months my Junior year of university, living in the back room of a local pawn shop. That was actually right around the time I started participating in the AGS forums. If you can find a ridiculously cheap place to live, it makes all the difference. I had the benefit of internet access, and when you're a student, that is essential, so look for someplace that has that unless your university has a 24 hour computer lab you can access.

If homelessness is a little too much for you, roommates are a godsend. If you can find someone you trust to room with you for a year while you finish university, rent (which is the highest cost you're likely to be paying) can be cut in half and passed along to other basic needs like food and hygiene.

Unless you're in a committed relationship, stop dating. Don't go out, quit drinking and if you smoke, drop that nasty wallet-killing habit as well. One night of debauchery can cost more than a month living as a hermit, especially when women are involved. Also, use your spare change! Carry a separate coin pouch and use exact change when paying for things. Always try to get rid of coins, and you won't end up having a surplus of coin that you could've really used before (Double edged sword, though, as when you really need it, you won't have coins sitting around the house to scrounge around for).

Learn to cook, and get really friendly with a butcher or some other food services people - there's often extra food left over at the end of the day that will go to waste - Oddly sized cuts of meat, cheeses close to expiration, etc., that you can get for free if you have the right connections.

Be an adventure game character - resourcefulness is your friend.

This looks really interesting - I've always been a big fan of sci-fi. Are these in-game shots? I'm not seeing a character sprite or GUI at the moment.

Love the EGA look. It appears that you're strictly adhering to the classic EGA 16-color palette? It's one hell of an undertaking, but the screens are looking mighty fine. From the menu screen (the last screenshot) and the information you gave, it seems that you're doing a mouse interface, but are you planning on implementing a text interface as well? I've actually recently just started playing QFGII (The original, not the remake) again after a long, long time and am enjoying the hell out of it.

I'm going to be keeping an eye on this project. Best of luck!

I agree, you seem to have gone a little overboard with the smudge tool - The coloring is great, but you've destroyed a lot of your lineart. What I'd suggest is to make sure you're doing your lineart on a separate layer, probably with a soft edged brush tool (I'm assuming this was done in a program that supports more dynamic brushes). Do your colors on a separate layer and smudge as you have, and you won't lose quite as much sharpness.

Otherwise, looking good!

風の妖精：刹那

Setsuna, a mute ninja that has pledged to follow Dennis to the ends of the earth to exact revenge for a wrong upon the people of his village.

Are 15 year olds even allowed to play the games you work on?  

Akiba's Trip is only CERO C, so technically 15+ is okay - it just looks worse on paper than it actually is*. Class of Heroes and Wizardry: Harmless. Not so sure about Gladiator Begins, though. Kuma Story? I guess if you overthink the chicken bit, it could be pretty bad.

And back on topic, I remember when games didn't even require Hard Disks at all. First computer was a good ol' TI 99/4A. Loved that thing.

*Wouldn't recommend playing the mini-games on the AKIBA'S TRIP website around your parents, though.